Labs-on-chips, which can be similar to systems-on-a-chip, can be used to attempt to offer desired economical solutions for biomedical applications. For instance, labs-on-chips can combine, in monolithic form, sample containment, transportation (e.g., microfluidic), programmability, and detection for bio-sensing. Lab-on-chip miniaturization can facilitate devices that operate with low power, are capable of low cost, portable implementations, have reduced sample size requirements, and better resolution for bio-sensing.
Dielectrophoresis can be used in a broad range of lab-on-chip applications such as cytometry, cell sorting, and mixture separation. Conventionally, due to technology limitations, many implementations are limited to fabricating dielectrophoresis electrodes that are on a scale of 10 s of microns or larger, and therefore, it is desirable to implement a system with large numbers of small and dense electrodes that can manipulate small micron and nanometer scale particles (e.g., viruses), using densely integrated systems.
Also, when dealing with nanometer scale particles, such that the size of the particles is smaller than the diffraction limit of visible light, it can be difficult to optically detect such particles, as the particles are so small that the use of optical microscopy to directly view the particles is not possible. Therefore, it is desirable to develop a method to manipulate small scale particles into ordered arrangements that can be detected and assayed using macro-scale optical systems.